180 IiOB AT BAY. 



have been in a Border Foray had they lived in the time 

 of Johnny Armstrong. Such and so great are the 

 Kerses ; but they will not go down to posterity like the 

 Purdies, " carent quia, Vate sacro : " neither could 

 the old river god Rob himself contend with the otter 

 so valiantly as Charlie Purdie. Whether it was that 

 he had a sort of fellow-feeling for an animal that was 

 amphibious like himself, and followed the same pro- 

 fession, or from what other cause I cannot say, but 

 Rob did not particularly shine in a fair stand-up otter 

 fight, as you shall hear. 



In the latter end of September, 1839, Kerse had set 

 a cairn net at the Clippers, " a little below Makerstoun 

 House, but on the bank of the river opposite to it ; and 

 on going to the cairn to examine the net, he saw a 

 young otter sitting on, and entangled in it ; he threw 

 more of the net over it, whilst drawing it to the land, 

 and when he had caught hold of the tail, and was 

 carrying it off, a large otter, which he described {( as a 

 she ane," five feet in length, jumped out of the water, 

 ran up the bank after him, to use his own words, " like 

 a mad bear," and commenced a furious attack upon him. 

 Rob had nothing to defend himself with but his hat ; 

 and as he was holding the young one with one hand, he 

 found he was likely to have the worst of it, and to be 

 bitten by the one animal or the other. So he threw 

 the whelp to the old one, saying, " Aye, ye she devil, he 

 may get her, twae to ane is odds." They both swam 

 away ; that is, the two otters, not Kerse. 



On looking after them he saw two other young ones 

 trying to make past the point of the cairn, which, owing 



